My journey to work starts in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Fun facts about the city include the song “Okie from Muskogee”, sang by Merle Haggard, mentioned Muskogee. Girl Scouts cookies being sold to raise money started in Muskogee according to the Three Rivers Museum. Girl scouts did a fundraiser to raise money for the military troops during World War I, and sold cookies and popcorn balls, but the cookies were so popular that other troops started to sale girl scout cookies. Carrie Underwood grew up only 19 miles away and she is in the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. My favorite T-shirt is from the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.

One think I like about my job is that the gas is so cheap here. This morning, I paid $1.88 for a gallon of gas at the Kum & Go station. As I was pumping gas, I read the billboard that stated:

A wireless company that cares enough to listen.

Next, I go by the Homeland grocery store.

It is employee owned and has fruit in there that I have never seen before. Also, it is named after one of my favorite shows: Homeland. One of the Boys and Girls Clubs is located near a school that had Homeland Security do an assessment of their system.

I then go by the Castle. I completed my Zombie 5K obstacle run there. I saw men in kilts, women dressed as fairies, and men in all black dressed as dragoon tamers in the month of May (at the gas station), their Renaissance Month.

Next is the Amish Cheese House. I buy bread for half price there, and eat home made ice cream in the flavor of Purple Cow. I have bought a cook book that has recipes that keeps me wanting to cook, and how to cook my families famours Strawberry Cake the correct way (jello should be separated out in water). At times I see the Amish driving tractors around Pryor.

Across from the Amish Cheese house is the Dutch pantry, with a buffet. I love their pumpkin bread loaf.

Next is MidAmerica, Oklahoma’s Largest Industrial Park, with more than 80 employers.

And a right turn onto Tiger Boulevard, to where one can find the Pryor Tigers, perhaps hiding in the hay fields.

Next is the Pryor Recreation Center, where one of the Boys and Girls Club is located. They have a van.

The club is decorated with “Lights On” decorations, where kids and parents learned to speak Cherokee, and listened to Cherokee Tales. However, parent involvement was less than what was expected. One problem to possibly “HackOut” is the low amount of parent involvement.

The club was painted by Googlers, who donated their time and the supplies to paint the ClubHouse.

I then enter my “Tinkerer’s Corner”, where I work to plan the CS First Clubs activity for today. The Code talkers today will be learning about music copyright resources of rellseo, pond5, and youtube.com/audiolibrary. We will work on game design, and upload the Pryor Doll, to both run in the Mayes Runner Game and to enable the Fashion Design Team to accessorize the Pryor dolls. I talk on the phone about vlogging future plans (using videos as a form of blog), and have a community member talk about the backpack program for a vlog. Her program helps fight hunger for children who may not get any food over the weekend. I work on recruitment. Gurus, Ninjas, and mentors wanted.

The Pryor Code talkers did their first Code Jam. They attempted the “At the High Sea’s” activity and enjoyed it. Youth ages 5-8 years of age finally had the opportunity to learn the joy of computer science, and some of the WindBreakers Club members helped mentor and did a wonderful job. I tried to encourage them to share some of the superpower skills they had learned while doing the Story Teller’s club. The older youth were able to apply some of the leadership skills they have gained while at the Boys and Girls Club in Green Country.

I learned what a task it was to prepare for this event, and thanks to Boys and Girls Club staff, learned to break it down by age so that it was easier to manage. The 5 and 6 years that could not read the CS First Rules had an older club member help them along in the program.

I am an Americorps Vista Volunteer. The VISTA mission: Make Poverty History. My journey began with training in Atlanta, Georgia, learning about poverty and the importance of giving those who want opportunities those opportunities. For some, America is seen as the land of opportunity, and being so makes so many people want to live here in the United States.

My Americorps placement is at a non-profit called Boys and Girls Club. They want to transform youth and give them a safe structured place to be during the after school time hours. I have been placed in Pryor, Oklahoma. Pryor is located on the northeast part of Oklahoma state, called Green Country. The club is in the area of the Cherokee Nation. I have been here for about four months, spreading computer science joy with the CS first curriculum. The CS First curriculum is part of the unique partnership with Google that is video based and allows youth to learn block coding and problem solving skills.

When I first arrived to Oklahoma, there had been serious flooding so the water levels were high, and the mosquitoes and the chiggers were happy. I was not happy, because I scratched non-stop for the first three weeks of living in Oklahoma. I was awoken at midnight by my phone which told me flood levels were at a dangerous level for the area that I was living. C0-workers mentioned they had felt the earth shake, and I was told that the area is on a fault line, and that earthquakes are possible. I meet the great kids in the Boys and Girls Clubs who were “code talkers” form the beginning. I am a stranger to this town, so the code they were talking was not what I was familiar with.

CS First is a video based computer science program that has many themes to choose from. The Story Telling theme has been completed by our “code talkers” in a total of about 10 club meetings. The age minimum was 9 years of age. The club members were inventive and made the club fun. The danced freely to “It is raining taco’s”. We finished the last day of club learning how to “Hang Out” on google’s video conferencing, and leaning about “cookies” (and eating some cookies). Our favorite club drink so far? Right size Sprites.

The biggest challenge is lack of internet. The CS First Site (found at http://www.cs-first.com/) and the Scratch site (found at https://scratch.mit.edu/) needs internet to be able to run the club. The second biggest challenge is being a stranger in this town. Parents do not want me to work with their kids because I am an unknown. The final challenge is trying to make a quota, by myself, without internet connection, because I believe the goal is unrealistic for a stranger in this country that I have been assigned. However, I do believe that a lot of groundwork could be down in this one year assignment. The youth seem to like the chance to learn about code and they all seem to have the natural ability to talk code.

Is has been four months as a VISTA working at an allowance that keeps me in the poverty line. My professional development has been wonderful and beyond anything I could have imagined. I have been to the GooglePlex at Mountain View, California, learning about CS First Curriculum which can be found at http://www.cs-first.com/

The Googlers have impressed on me how they work as a team to get amazing goals accomplished and to “do no evil”. They have a self driving car after all!!! I have had cutting edge training on Service Enterprise, Volunteer Recruitment, Fundraising, and Vlogging though video conferencing. I am in a Cherokee language class where I learned why they have “Sleepy Traveler” motels, and that languages are dying everyday. I took a Bridges out of Poverty training class where I learned I had a mental class mentality, and why working with those who have a Poverty mentality needs to be approached differently than my approach.

My first three months was spent in training, getting oriented to the new area that I work in, working on recruiting volunteers to help expand the CS First Clubs so that more youth can learn about computer science, starting a volunteer appreciation program, and learning about stereotypes by reviewing three books that were recommend as must reads. One of those must reads were Whistling Vivaldi by Dr. Claude. I participated in a Book Salon about Whistling Vivaldi, which helped me consider what I should be doing in a CS First Club. Through this work I have learned much about stereotypes in computer science, and the importance of giving youth the opportunity to be exposed to computer science and technology.

Currently, I am excited to be planning Code Jam events for the Boys and Girls Club members, so that they can get exposure to computer science and have fun while coding. My goal is not to make them code talkers, because they were Code Talkers before I ever came to this town (if you knew enough Cherokee to know what Sleepy Traveler is code for you would understand why I believe they have been Code Talkers for centuries). My goal is to give them the chance to gain experience in coding so that they can succeed in whatever career they choose. Perhaps they will be the next code talkers for Google.

A couple of weeks ago, Zenzele and I had the opportunity to train 60 Wake County teachers in how to implement CS First at their schools. After a brief introduction as to why CS First is important and what it is, the teachers explored the site and also created a project from the Game Design theme. It was fun to see them excited about the program and about sharing it with their classes. We’re excited that even more students are going to participate in CS First. Here are a few pictures!

At our 2 Chicago locations we have had a great response from the members at the Boys and Girls Club to the CS-First program. There were some students who would go home and continue to work on the their scratch projects. Almost all the students that completed the first CS-First program returned to participate in our second session of the program at our Club One location. The kids just can’t get enough of CS-First and Scratch! The students were so excited about completing the first session of CS-First they wanted to throw a party. So we got some paper for them to make signs to decorate and they all brought in snacks to celebrate. In the picture you can see their decorations and excitement.

While we have had a great response from the members of the Club we are in the process of overcoming a couple obstacles with implementing CS-First. The biggest being our limited access to technology within the clubs. Basically we have more club members interested in participating in the program than computers available. To overcome this obstacle Kelly and I are in the process of applying for grants to bring more technology into the Chicago clubs.

Overall we have been able to introduce over 80 students to computer science through the four CS-First Clubs we have been able to run in Chicago. While we are working on getting more technology to expand within the Boys and Girls Club, Kelly and I are also spreading the word on CS-First to the schools throughout Chicago. We plan to continue to expand within the Boys and Girls Club as well as through out the Chicago school system to try and expose as many students to the wonders of Computer Science as possible.

My name is Kelly Rosiles-Villagomez, and my students calls me “Coding Grandma!” I am proudly serving at the city where I was born and raised in – Chicago! I recently graduated from Lake Forest College (Go Foresters!!) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and minor in Mathematics. I have discovered my passion in helping improve education equity through my first AmeriCorps program called City Year (I am still wearing that red jacket!). As a Code Corp I am hoping to see more computer science enrichment programs are integrated to our students’ education. In my free time, I like to get involved in my sorority, dance, and travel. After this year with Code Corps, I would like to pursue a higher degree (M.Ed/Ed.D) with a focus on research and would like to help continue improving the equity and quality of education in my career.

I’m reposting this from my personal blog I recently started, CS in the Clubhouse. It was originally posted August 19th.

The Goal: Kids as Leaders

One of the primary goals of the Boys & Girls Club movement is to foster leadership skills and self-confidence in our members. Each of our programs is targeted at one or more of our five Core Program Areas: The Arts; Character and Leadership; Sports, Fitness and Recreation; Health and Life Skills; and Education and Career. Our experience with CS First has been exciting because, in running the program, we have found that kids are sharing with each other and finding the confidence to become leaders in the group.Continue reading →